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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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AFRICAN COLONIZATION— ITS PROGRESS 
AND PROSPECTS. 



ADDRESSES 



DELITEEED BY 



WILLIAM H. ALLEN, L.L.D., 



JOHN P. CROZER, ESQ., 



ANNIVERSARY MEETINCx OF THE PENNSYLVANIA 

COLONIZATION SOCIETY, HELD 'iN TRINITY 

METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 

PWladelplila, October 35, 1863. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 

WILLIAM F. GEDDES, PKINTER, 320 CHESTNUT STREET. 






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DISCOURSE OF WILLIAM H. ALLEN, L.L.D. 



JUr. Presideiit and Gentlemen of the Pennsylvania Colonization 

Society : — 

Not quite two and a half centuries since, the first ship-load of Africans 
was imported into the British colonies of Noi-th America. They landed 
at Jamestown, Yirginia, and were purchased by the planters. The 
importation, sale and purchase were regarded as honorable transactions 
at that time, or winked at, as not specially blameworthy. There was 
profit for the shipper and profit for the buyer. Other slave-freighted 
vessels soon followed, and before a century had elapsed slavery had 
established its base line for the invasion and occupation of the country 
all along the coast from the Hudson to Florida, and was pushing its 
oulposts up every navig'able river; a dismal cloud, electrified with ruin, 
resting on the horizon of our country ; its pent up forces to burst forth in 
the tumult and carnage which now convulse and sadden the continent. 

Oh, could the sequence of events liave been foreseen, until the harvest 
from that seedsowiug should be reaped, men's faces would have paled at 
the ghastly spectacle, and not one foot of a slave would have been per- 
mitted to touch the shore. Could some seer have predicted an increase 
of the colored race in this country to four and a half millions in two hmi- 
dred and forty years, the building up by its labor of a landed aristocracy 
hostile to republican freedom, the estrangement of kindred communities, 
the. retrograde movement to an aggressive and ferocious barbarism, in 
which brute force usurps the throne of reason, and thirst for domination 
makes and breaks the law ; the passionate debate which degenerates into 
phrenzied vituperation, and at last the marshaling of mighty armies, the 
shock and carnage of battle, the destruction of accumulated wealth, the 
wail of widows and orphans, and the threatened overthrow of a beneficent 
government — could all these results have been foreseen, what kind of 
welcome, think you, would have greeted the first and all subsequent slave- 
ships and their human freights I 



6 

But no prophet saw the portent, or if some Cassandra uttered a voice 
of warning, her words passed by unheeded, as the ravings of insanity. 
Greed of gold blinded all eyes and deafened all ears. Now see the gold 
which we have sacrificed so much to gain — where is it ? Melting from 
our grasp like ice in a furnace ; cast into cannon and mortars ; hammered 
into muskets and rifles ; floating off and sinking in iron-clad monitors 
and monsters ; hurrying away in horses and harness and the swift wheels 
of artillery ; devoured by armies which consume every thing and produce 
nothing ; springing into gas in the explosion of gunpowder ; and strewed 
in deadly fragments by the bursting of bomb-shells. 

Go, it must ; five hundred millions a yca,r in the North, and as much 
more in the South, by a law of moral compensation which no man nor 
nation can evade, till every dollar gathered by wrong shall be scattered 
to the winds, or drunk like the dust of Aaron's golden calf in the bitter 
cup of retribution. Let it go ; and when it is gone, and the cup 
drained to the dregs, we shall learn that public virtue, true manliness, the 
upright administration of the laws, the love of man and the fear of God, 
are worth more than "all the wealth that sinews bought and sold have 
ever earned." 

But the colored race is with us. The warp and woof of its destiny 
is woven in the same web with ours. Four and a half millions of a 
depressed and dependent population, look to the dominant race for the 
solution of their fate, and we cannot shirk the responsibility. The 
problem is beset with diflSculties. Implicated as it is with that most 
exciting of all subjects of agitation, slaveholding, it touches the interests, 
the habits, the prejudices, and affects profoundly the civihzation of a vast 
section of this continent. While the colored race exists in the two 
conditions of freedom and bondage, it is one in sympathy and interest, 
one in physical and mental qualities, and one in political inferiority and 
social exclusion. The freedom of the one class is little more than the 
liberty to choose masters and to change them, while the bondage of the 
other keeps the adult in bone and sinew a child in intellect and depen- 
dence. As the numbers of the freedmen receive continual accessions 
from the ranks of the bondmen, the line which separates the two classes 
is variable ; while the boundary between the African and Caucasian is 



so fixed and impassable tliat every admixture of blood sinks at once to 
the level of the depressed race. 

The destiny of the free colored people cannot be entirely separated 
from that of the slaves. Indeed, it would seem that slavery is the Boeo- 
tian sphynx propounding her fatal riddle to all passers-by. It obtrudes 
everywhere ; crops out in every form, moral, economical and political, 
and will not down at the bidding of any exorcist. It underlies all other 
questions, however profound, and overrides all other interests however 
prominent. If it were a moral question only, treating of slaves as moral 
beings and God's handiwork, it might be settled on the immutable prin- 
ciples of justice and right. If it were an economical question only, it 
might be left to the keen instinct of self-interest to foster or abolish 
slavery in the States where it exists, and to introduce or exclude it in 
States where it does not. If it were a political question only, it might 
be adjusted by compromise and concession, or the knot might be cut with 
the sword. But it is all of these together; and its .phases so vary witji 
the stand-point of the observer, that no two parties can agree upon the 
premises of an argument, nor join an issue of fact or law. 

Astronomers are accustomed to reduce their observations to the sun's 
centre, in order that those made at different times and places may be 
compared -with one another. If it were possible for those who discuss 
this problem to refer all their observations, whatever their point of view, 
to the moral centre of the universe, which is God, they would find solid 
ground, and reach a conclusion. "God hath made of one blood all 
nations for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined 
the bounds of their habitation." Every departure from this great truth, 
every violation of this beneficent decree introduces agitation and disorder 
into communities, and sooner or later is followed by the penalty of strife 
and blood. 

Twenty-five years since a young writer* of uncommon originality and 
vigor of thought, born and educated in a slave-holding State, but at that 
time a citizen of Pennsylvania, published a book modestly entitled " Some 
Thoughts on Domestic Slavery." Among other propositions which went 

• John L. Carey, of Dickinson College, Carlisle ; subsequently editor of tlie 
Baltimore American. 



to the pith of the matter, he proved from history and from human 
nature " Tliat two distinct races of people so unlike that amalgama- 
tion by intermarriage is im2-)racticable, cannot long dwell together 
in peace on terms of political and social equality." The one must 
occupy an inferior position and be in some form in subjection to the 
other. 

This proposition has been generally accepted as the law of races ; and 
its application to the populations of this country has attracted the 
anxious attention of thoughtful men. You may emancipate the slave, 
you may educate the freedmau, you may pay him just wages for his 
labor, you may put arms in his hands and teach him how to use them, 
you may elevate him far above his former condition, but you will not, 
and ought not, and cannot intermarry with him ; and until you do this 
and thereby accept him as your equal, socially, you cannot admit him as 
your equal, politically, without inaugurating a conflict which will be 
more bitter and deadly as the numbers of the two races approach 
equality. It is certain, then, that so long as the colored race shall 
remain in this country, it will be doomed to hopeless depression and 
inferiority. Such is its condition now, whether bond o}' free, and such it 
must remain. The interests, the antipathies, the necessities, the very 
instinct of self-preservation of the white race, will demand and enforce 
this, right or wrong. The only hope of the American negroes to rise 
in the social and political scale to the dignity of their manhood, is in 
removal to a country peopled and governed by men of their own race. 
Such a country cannot be found on this continent, nor on more than one 
of the American Islands. You may transport them to Central America, 
(if the Central Americans will receive them,) but you will only change 
the locality of their nominal freedom and actual subjection. They will 
still be farm laborers and household servants — the hewers of wood and 
drawers of water to a dominant race. You may remove them to some 
unoccupied territory at the base of the Rocky Mountains, but soon the 
advancing tide of the white population will pass over and submerge 
them. You may transfer them to Canada by underground or over- 
ground railway, but there, in districts where the colored people are 
numerous, they will discover that the conflict of races has already com- 



^6/ 



raeuced, and they will meet a welcome from the whites more chilling than 
the wintry air. There is no rest for the colored man except where the 
white man cannot live. There are the bounds of his habitation; and it 
would secra that Providence has placed pestilence to guard his ancestral 
home from the intrusion of white men — a sentinel as sleepless as the 
angel with flaming sword that guarded the gates of Paradise. Africa 
invites her scattered sons and daughters, the bondmen and bondwomen 
of every clime, and promises them health, peace and competence. 
There, in the home of his fathers the black man can live and thrive, 
while the white man sickens and dies ; there, on a soil of tropical 
luxuriance, he may grow rich ; there, under a government of equal 
rights, he may call no man master ; and there he may be the honored 
instrument, under God, of redeeming a continent from barbarism to 
Christian civilization. 

The Republic of Liberia is no longer a problem ; it is a success. 
Thanks to the men who founded and have sustained the American 
Colonization Society and its branches in the States, they have worked 
on in faith and hope, in the face of opposition at home and discourage- 
ments in Africa, until they see the fruits of their philanthropy, in a 
well-established, self-governing republic of colored men, into which 
the colony they planted forty-three years ago has grown. Along a 
coast-line of five or six hundred miles, which, within the memory of some 
of us, was visited only by slave-ships, and covering an interior occupied 
by two hundred thousand native Africans, who were divided into hostile 
tribes engaged in perpetual wars with each other to supply the slave 
dealers with human merchandise, now no prowling slaver casts anchor 
to await his prey ; no wars are waged for human booty ; no captives are 
torn from home and friends to perish in the middle passage, or pine in 
hopeless bondage ; no blood of slaughtered hecatombs assuages the 
anger of malignant demons, nor slakes the savage bloodthirst of chiefs 
more demons than they ; but thriving settlements dot the sea-shore and 
extend along the banks of the rivers for miles into the interior; the 
marts of lawful commerce stand on the sites of forsaken barracoons; 
cotton, coffee and sugar grow on old battle fields ; school houses and 
churches rise on grounds once devoted to the orgies of a ferocious 



10 

superstition; and the voice of prayer and praise ascends to God wliere 
but few years since were heard the mummeries of idolatry and the wail 
of victims led forth to the sacrifice. 

The Pennsylvania Colonization Society, which has contributed its 
share, both of money and counsel, to these cheering results, may be 
pardoned for a feeling of exultation in a retrospect of its doings on 
every retui'n of its anniversary. 

Many honest doubts were formerly entertained as to the capacity of 
the colored people to support and govern themselves, as a permanent 
civilized community, without the direction and presence of white men. 
It was predicted that the colony, as soon as it should be left to its own 
control, would relapse into barbarism. The indolence of the tropical 
races, the improvidence of the negro, and the overpowering numbers of 
the native tribes, were arguments to sustain these doubts. But the 
history and progress of Liberia during the sixteen years of its existence 
as an independent State, will do much to satisfy the most skeptical on 
this point. It has framed a constitution and organized a government, 
with distinct, executive, legislative, and judicial powers, and with all 
the official machinery of admininstration. It has elected prudent and 
capable men to the Presidency, who have preserved order at home and 
secured respect abroad. Its Legislature, composed, of a Senate and 
House of Representatives, has enacted wholesome laws, adapted to the 
necessities of the people, and these laws are executed in due form. 
Courts of record are regularly held, their Judges are respectable, and 
their mandates are obeyed. 

It has a military organization to enforce the laws, and for protection 
against the native tribes beyond its borders. It has asserted its superi- 
ority over the natives within its jurisdiction, in arms as well as in arts, 
and these now yield peaceable submission to its authority. It has a 
school in every neighborhood, a church in every village, and a college at 
Monrovia, its capital. Life and property being secure, the products 
of its industry are annually multiplying in a greater ratio than its 
population, and consequently individual and national wealth are increas- 
ing. Its exportable products, cotton, sugar, rice, coffee, ginger, pepper, 
indigo, arrow-root and palm oil, may be grown in quantities that have 



11 

no limits but those of land and labor; and these commodities being in 
demand in the markets of the world, will supply the republic by exchange 
with all the products of other lands which its people may require. 

These are elements of stability and prosperity, and though the begin- 
nings have been small, there is a continent for expansion. Let no man 
despise +he day of small tilings. As black men were the Zerubbabels 
who, under the auspices of the Colonization Society, laid the foundation 
of this temple of freedom: for their race, so shall their hands finish it, 
and shall bring forth the head-stone with rejoicing. Fear not that the 
native populations will absorb this handful of people, and reduce thera 
to their own level. Civilization, commerce, and Christianity are mighty 
aggressive forces. In contact with barbarism, ignorance and idolatry, 
they are always victorious. Where the race is different and its temper 
intractable, as in the case of the American Indians, they may extermi- 
nate ; but where the race is identical and its disposition docile and imi- 
tative, as in the case of the Africans, they will instruct, employ, elevate 
and absorb. 

But all this is not the work of a day, nor of the forty-five years since 
the Colonization Society was organized. It is the work of centuries; 
and they who censure the Society for not working faster and doing 
more, and who sneeringly ask how long it will take to remove the 
colored people to Africa, when it has hardly removed a hundredth part 
of the yearly increase, misconceive the whole question. Suppose that 
within half a century after the settlement of Jamestown or Plymouth^ 
it had been predicted that before two centuries more should elapse, the 
voluntary, self-supported emigration from Europe to this country would 
average a thousand a day ; would not the prophet have been suspected 
of madness ? Yet this was the rate of influx during several years 
between 1850 and 1860; and a majority of these immigrants were in 
no better condition, pecuniarily, than the free blacks of this country now 
are. If a tenth part of that number had lauded on our shores during 
our early colonial times, poor and ignorant as many of them were, 
they would have perished by starvation. The country could not have 
supported them, nor furnished them the means to support themselves 
by labor. An asylum had to be prepared for them ; a free nation had 



12 

to grow ; capital had to be accumulated, and a demand for unskilled 
labor created. After all this was done, and the country rendered 
capable of absorbing them, they came, first by scores, then by hundreds, 
then by thousands, in an ever widening stream, until a great army 
arrived every year. Yet there was no glut in the labor market. Even 
when the tide of immigration was at the flood, the wages of labor were 
all the while increasing. 

Who shall say that within two centuries a similar emigration from 
this country to Africa shall not be witnessed ? First prepare the 
asylum, and the down-trodden of this land will fly to it from the 
depressing influence of a dominant race, just as the down-trodden 
of Europe have fled hither from the despotism of a dominant class. 

Liberia has grown as rapidly as is consistent with its health and long 
life, and more rapidly than the early colonies of North America. The 
tree that strikes the deepest roots, and forms the sturdiest trunk, and 
throws out the widest branches, and lives the longest, is the tardiest 
grower ; while the gourd that springs up in a night, withers in a day. 
In the progress of civilization Providence hastens slowly, very slowly. 
The great movements of history, like the germination of a seed beneath 
the surface of the ground, begin unseen and silently. Here and there, 
apparently disconnected, the forces that are to change the world work 
on, seldom observed and never fully comprehended, until the time 
arrives for their combination in a grand result. For example, the 
discovery of America, doubtless the most important event of modern 
times, required a vast outlay of time and thought, of study and 
invention, as a preparatory work. But the Divine Being was not 
impatient at the delay. The fairest portion of all his earth was 
trodden only by wild beasts and savage men ; but He seemed in no 
haste to rescue it from them. Here lay the continent in its virgin 
beauty, 

' ' Wliere nature loved to trace. 
As if for gods a dwelling place. ' ' 

Here it lay, the spinal column of the globe, until the fullness of time 
should come. The art of printing was to be invented ; science was to 



13 

be dissem'Tiated ; the form of the earth was to be investigated; the 
properties of the magnetic needle were to be discovered and applied to 
navigation; the commercial spirit was to be awakened; and the human 
mind was to be stirred to new activity in every field of enterprise. And 
these things were being done, in different countries, by men who knew 
nothing of each other, and when all were ready — printing, astronomy, 
magnetism, commerce, enterprise — then Columbus was ready to use 
them, and unveil a new continent beyond the sea. 

As the redemption of America from savage barbarism to Christian 
civilization was the greatest fact of history from the fall of the Roman 
Empire to the American Revolution — standing forth " the single wonder 
of a thousand years " — so we may believe that the redemption of Africa 
will be the great leading fact in the progress of civilization for some 
centuries to come. 

History proves that barbarous countries do not emerge from barbarism 
by development from within, but by accretion from without. America 
derived its culture from Western Europe ; the people of Western Europe 
received theirs from the Romans; the Romans from the Greeks; the 
Greeks from the Phoenicians and Egyptians; and long before Tyrian 
merchants trafficked, or Egypt became the school of the world, a high 
civilization and a profound philosophy had a home beyond the Indus, in 
the old cradle of mankind. One race hands the torch of science to 
another ; but no one seems to know how to strike the fire for itself. Had 
no invader gained a footing in England, that island would have remained 
in barbarism to this day ; and America had been still the hunting-ground 
of the savage, had not civilization been imported. Africa is behind the 
rest ; and yet not very far behind, for in the life of humanity three or four 
centuries are but as three or four years in the life of a man. She has not 
made time with her sister contments in the race of improvement, not 
because she is a sandy desert, for the fertility of her soil is exuberant, 
capable of enriching commerce with a profusion of valuable products 
which the world wants ; but because she has been reserved for the habita- 
tion of black men, and the white men who attempted to explore and 
colonize her perished. It was written that Africa should be redeemed by 
her own children ; not those born on her soil, but those who had passed 



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througli tlie apprenticeship of servitude in a strange land, and had learned 
the arts and religion of a Christian nation in the house of their bondage. 
He who regards slavery as an institution to be perpetuated without limit, 
and not as a discipline preparatory to freedom,, has not yet comprehended 
its true relations and meaning in history. As childhood is tutelage for 
manhood, so slavery is national tutelage for freedom. The children of 
Israel had never conquered and possessed the land in which their fathers 
were pilgrims and sojourners, had they not multiplied and been disci- 
plined in the hard bondage of Egypt ; so our children of Africa, when 
their leader and lawgiver shall arise, learned in all the wisdom of the 
Americans, will go forth, not simultaneously in one grand exodus, but 
gradually, as this country shall be in a condition to part with them, and 
as Africa shall be prepared to receive them, not as now by fifties and 
hundreds a year, nor, as some thoughtlessly imagine, by millions, but in 
a continuous and ever swelling stream — they will go forth to their land 
of promise, not to exterminate the native inhabitants, but to bless and 
elevate them. 

It would not be for the advantage of Liberia that a large number of 
persons just liberated from servitude, and ill fitted for self-direction and 
self-support, should be thrown at once upon her shores ; nor would it be 
for the advantage of this country that the exodus should be other than 
gradual. jSTo nation could bear the loss of millions of its laboring popu- 
lation at once, without serious embarrassment and the derangement of 
all its industrial interests. Such an emigration is fortunately impossible, 
for it would ruin this country, ruin the emigrants, and ruin Liberia. But 
by degrees the influx of white laborers from abroad, and the increase of 
our native white population vfill force the colored people into the lowest 
branches of labor, and finally, in the struggle for existence, will compete 
with them for these. When that time shall come, as it will, the colored 
people will not only desire to emigrate, but emigration will have become 
a necessity. 

But it would be heartless and ungracious to place our hopes for the 
emigration of the colored people, alone or chiefly, upon their unfortunate 
condition in this country, and the competition and repulsion of white 
labor. Thanks be to God, there are attractions in Africa which will 



15 

do more than the repulsions in America to promote emigration. The 
colored people think that the Colonization Society is a scheme to get 
rid of them. Now there is a good share of human nature in colored 
people; and if they think you mean to kick them out of the country 
they were born in, they will obstinately persist in staying where they 
are. They will bear any number of kicks, but they will not be kicked 
out. Even the donkey has sense enough to stay by the hay-stack till 
he sees the corn-crib. The Society must show the corn-crib ; and 
it can. Adventurous travelers have penetrated Africa from the four 
cardinal points, and their lines of research have converged almost at 
its centre. They speak of soils of marvelous productiveness; of a- 
profusion of animal life; of cotton, coffee, sugar-cane, rice and palm 
oil ; of ivory, iron and gold ; of men far superior both physically and 
mentally, to those whose territories have been desolated to furnish slaves 
for foreign markets; of lakes and rivers, high mountains and fertile 
valleys, where the maps we studied in childhood marked "unexplored 
regions" or deserts of arid sand; — in a word, they describe a land 
abounding in resources to sustain an industrious population and a pro- 
fitable commerce. 

Another fact which will induce a large emigration, at no distant day, 
is the demand for tropical products by the inhabitants of the temperate 
zones. This demand is increasing every year, and outstripping the 
supply ; while commerce is eagerly searching for new localities of their 
production and new avenues to reach them. While the interior of 
Africa, dotted with lakes and intersected by rivers, stands ready to pour 
out of her abundance, commerce stands waiting impatiently for the 
deadly coast-belt to be cut through by men who can endure the climate, 
and land or river transportation from the interior to the sea provided. 
Then the buyer will meet the seller on the shore, and the exchange of 
commodities will benefit and enrich both. Commerce is the great 
pacificator and ci^dlizer. It teaches even the rude barbarian that it is 
more profitable to barter with men than to butcher them ; and when the 
warlike tribes which prey upon their weaker neighbors shall discover 
that they can make more money by exporting raw cotton than raw men; 



16 

they will turn from predatory warfare to the peaceful culture of the soil. 
Emigration will provide teachers to instract them in all this. 

Finally, on this point, the missionary spirit of the age demands the 
colonization of Africa, Nearly all the white missionaries who have 
been sent to Africa, died of diseases incident to the climate, or returned 
home with ruined health. The heroic Cox, who, among others, went 
forth an apostle and died a martyr, said: "Write on my monument — 
Let thousands perish before Africa be abandoned. " But the missionary 
societies have found a better way. They educate colored men and send 
them. Thus colonization, commerce and Christianity are co-workers in 
the grand scheme of giving a continent to civilization, and making 
"Ethiopia stretch out her hands unto God.'' Where emigration goes, 
commerce will follow; and where commerce can penetrate, the gospel 
will be at her side. Civilization demands Africa for its future progress; 
commerce demands Africa to strike the balance of exchanges between 
the intertropical and wintry regions of the earth ; and Christianity de- 
mands Africa that her ministers may obey the divine command : " Go ye 
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." 

I regard it only a question of time that the republic of Liberia, and 
other kindred colonies which may hereafter be planted on the western 
shores of Africa, shall extend their population and jurisdiction far into 
the interior, and count their inhabitants by millions. When this time 
shall arrive, and this teeming population shall place steamboats on every 
navigable river, and lay down the iron arteries of commerce through her 
valleys, and the whistle of the locomotive shall echo through the gorges 
of her mountains, and schools, academies and universities, of which the 
college now open at Monrovia will be the parent and pattern, shall 
become luminous points to enlighten the whole land, and the industrial 
arts shall make the wilderness blossom as the rose, there needs no pro- 
phet to foretell that lines of steam-ships will leave New York and Phila- 
de]i)hia for the African coast as regularly as they now leave Liverpool 
for America. 

I desire to make this record, and if anything I may say shall be remem- 
bered sojong, I hope it may be this expression of my belief that before 
the year two thousand a vast commerce between our Northern ports and 



17 

Africa will be carried on, and that a voluntary, self-paying emigration 
of the colored people of this country will set strongly to that continent 
before the lapse of a century from this day. 

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that emigration will never be 
self-supporting. Even in that case the removal of the colored people 
will not be so impracticable an enterprise as many assume. No extra- 
ordinary skill in arithmetic is required to demonstrate that the money 
which the present war has already cost the country, both North and 
South, would have removed every colored person in the land, bond as 
well as free, to a port of embarkation, given him an outfit worth a hun- 
dred dollars, paid his passage to Liberia, and left a balance sufficient to 
purchase a few acres of ground and build a comfortable dwelling for 
every family. And if the war shall continue two years longer, at the 
past and present rate of expenditure, it will have cost enough more to 
purchase every slave from his owner at the average price of five hundred 
dollars a head for men, women, and children. Let him who doubts this 
try the logic of figures. 

But a productive soil, a genial climate, and all other physical advan- 
tages are not sufficient for the building up of a nation. Something more 
is required. There must be mind to act on and through matter ; intelli- 
gence to direct labor to useful ends and subjugate the forces of nature 
for the service of a civilized community. To establish the equilibrium of 
a prosperous state there must be an even balance of brain and muscle. 
Labor without thought is unproductive ; and thought without labor only 
consumes; but combine the two and there is nothing too difficult for their 
united power to achieve. I infer from published accounts, as well as 
from the nature of the case, that Liberia needs a greater number of 
organizing and administrative minds. The disciplmed intellect of the 
country is not adequate to all the demands of private enterprise, and the 
growing responsibilities of the public service. While such culture as 
Presidents Roberts and Benson, Professors Blyden and Crummell, Chief 
Justice Drayton, and the President elect, Daniel B. Warner, have attained, 
has placed the capacity of colored men beyond dispute, the want of facili- 
ties for instruction has kept the supply of such men unequal to the de- 
mand. As population shall increase, the Republic will require more 
2 



18 

scliool teachers, and those of a higher order; as commerce shall extend 
and their foreign relations become more complicated, they must have a 
greater number of educated men to make and execute the laws at home, 
and to discharge diplomatic and consular functions abroad ; and as they 
shall penetrate further into the interioi", in their intercourse with the 
native tribes, they will need moral and religious teachers to dispense 
light and truth to those who now sit in darkness. 

These wants may be partly supplied, as heretofore, by emigrants 
previously educated in the United States; but this supply will be 
inadequate. Liberia must educate her children in her own schools, and 
her teachers in her own college. She must have a fountain of intelli- 
gence on her own soil, from which knowledge shall flow to all her bor- 
ders. Her leading 'men have seen the necessity for this, and her friends 
have responded liberally to their call. A handsome College edifice has 
been built at Monrovia, and opened for the reception of students ; a 
president and two professors have been inaugurated, a class of eight 
youth admitted, and eight more are in course of preparation. To the 
chair of Mental and Moral Philosophy, and English Literature, filled by 
Professor Alexander Cruramell, and the chair of Greek and Latin 
Languages, filled by Professor Edward W. Blyden, it is desirable to 
add a chair of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Without in- 
struction in this department the course of study would be radically 
defective. It might seem more difficult to find a competent man for 
this chair, than to raise means for his support ; but such is not the case. 
Professor Martin H. Freeman, a graduate of Middlebury College, Vt., 
and for twelve years past principal of an institution for the education of 
colored youth in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, a man fully competent 
and ])repared for the work, has ofi'ered his services to the new college, 
and will emigrate to Liberia with his family, whenever a support of 
eight hundred dollars a year for five years shall be contributed or 
guaranteed. Our large-hearted President has subscribed a fourth part 
of the sum required, and I understand that another thousand has been 
pledged from Vermont. It will be an honor to Pennsylvania if her 
citizens will make up the two thousand dollars which are still wanted. 
I can conceive of no possible investment in the cause of humanity which 



19 

promises so large a revenue of good as this. When we can count the 
vahie of the school system which the fathers of New England intro- 
duced into this country, and of the colleges which fed and sustained 
that system, we may be able to estimate the benefits which Liberia 
College and others which will be formed after its pattern, will confer 
upon Africa. 

The college must also have books. Its want of a library attracted 
the notice of our respected manager, Edward S. Morris, Esq., of this 
city, who visited Liberia during the past year; and with characteristic 
energy he has undertaken to collect and forward contributions of books 
and periodicals. As the heart, hand and purse of Mr. Morris are in 
this enterprise, he will know no such word as fail. Through the aid of 
authors, publishers and owners of libraries, we believe that his efforts 
will be successful, and that the library of Liberia College will be an 
enduring monument of his philanthropy. 

Among the obstacles which the Colonization Society has encountered, 
no one lias been more persistent and disheartening than the reluctance 
of the free colored people to emigrate. There is something in human 
nature wlii<-h makes us "rather bear the ills we have than fly to others 
that we know not of." Only those of manly spirit and respectable edu- 
cation and standing will say with Professor Freeman : — 

" I prefer, if need be, a log hut, hard labor and poverty, with political, 
civil and social freedom and equality, to the most easy and prosperous 
condition attainable by the colored man here, combined, as it must be, 
with political, civil and social slavery and degradation." 

After the children of Israel were set free from bondage, an appren- 
ticeship of forty years was necessary to educate them for freedom. I 
believe that the Africo-Americans, who have already learned the social 
habits, language and religion, and many of the arts and handicrafts of 
a civilized community, will prove as apt scholars as they. One genera- 
tion will do the work, and the life of one generation is but a small frac- 
tion of the life of a race. The freedmen may retain much of the spirit 
of slaves, but the children of the freedmen will be freemen. Self-reli- 
ance, self-dependence and self-respect are not the attributes of slaves, 



20 

and are seldom acquired by those who have grown to manhood in 
bondage. They hug the chain that binds them to a master, because 
they dare not trust themselves to stand alone, nor to walk without 
being led. As the young eagle dreads to commit himself to the air on 
uncertain wings until the parent bird thrusts him forth from the nest, 
so the timid slave fears to confide in his own power of self-direction, 
because he has never tried that power and is unconscious that he has it. 

"Because there were no graves in Egypt hast thou taken us away 
to die in the wilderness ? Let us alone that we may serve the Egyp- 
tians. Better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilder- 
ness." Such was the language of those whose courage and manly virtue 
had been crushed out by centuries of hereditary bondage ; and such has 
been the language of many an emancipated black man, when, at his 
wit's end to procure food and clothing, he has thought of the "hoe-cake 
and possum" of old Virginia. And, as the children of Abraham, when 
they first came to the border of their inheritance were terrified by the 
report of their messengers, who said, "It is a land that eateth up its 
inhabitants ; and all the people are men of great stature ; and the cities 
are walled and very great ; and there we saw the giants, the sons of 
Anak ; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers ; and so we were 
in their sight ;" even so the messengers of ouf colored people who have 
pretended to search out their land of promise, have brought back an 
evil report of poor soils and poorer people, of hostile natives and a 
more hostile climate, of lions, serpents, cannibals and kings of Daho- 
mey, and I know not how many more sons of Anak, of the race of the 
giants ; and the ignorant and timid people are afraid. They are grass- 
hoppers in their own sight. And, as the Hebrew freedmen, who pre- 
ferred the leeks and onions and flesh-pots of Egypt to liberty and a 
country, were made to wander in the wilderness until their children, 
educated in freedom, were prepared to go up and conquer; so it is pro- 
bable that our freedmen will wander and suffer in the land of their 
former bondage until their children, who will not have trembled beneath 
the lash of a taskmaster, shall dare to go up and possess the land of 
their inheritance. 



21 

Let us then take heart, Mr. President, and work faithfully for God 
and man. Let us pursue steadily the two-fold object for which the 
Society was organized — the welfare of the colored people of America 
and the good of Africa — and when the storm that darkens our political 
hemisphere, and threatens to destroy all our first-born, so that there 
shall be no house in which there is not one dead, shall have passed 
away, a new impulse will be given to our enterprise, and it will be seen 
and known of all men, "That the scheme of Colonization is from 
God." 



ADDEESS or JOHN P. CROZEH, ESQ. 

The Pennsylvania Colonization Society, the anniversary of which we 
hold this evening, is auxiliary to the American Colonization Society, 
founded in Washington about forty-five years ago. The philanthropic 
men who were instrumental in its origin, have nearly all passed away, 
but the wisdom of the organization and the far-reaching forecast of its 
founders were never more apparent than at the present time. The So- 
ciety has all along had the sympathies of very many men high in charac- 
ter and estimation throughout the whole IJnited States, leading men in 
political life, philanthropists and gifted Christian ministers have been 
amongst its active friends and supporters. The Society has worked 
modestly but efficiently. The leading object of its ' appointment being 
to colonize "the free people of color, with their own consent," on the con- 
tinent of Africa, it has sought, in aiming to fulfil this mission, avoidance 
of conflict with all, whether in the North or in the South. 

Such was the object sought, and to accomplish this, much labor, and 
much money have been expended ; and the result is now apparent in the 
existence of the infant Republic of Liberia. 

The colonization enterprise seems now and in the future to present 
itself under a somewhat changed aspect, from the changed position of 
the colored population of this country, brought about by the sad exist- 
ing rebellion ; but the Society has not, as yet, departed from its original 
mode of [procedure as laid down by its constitution. Circumstances 
may, however, induce an early modification and change. 



22 

The first effort of practical colonization was in the winter of 1820. 
In February of that year the ship Elizabeth, a vessel of about four hun- 
dred tons burthen, was sent from New York by the American Colo- 
nization Society with eighty-eight emigrants, laden also with implements 
of husbandry, mechanics' tools, and a variety of such articles as were 
deemed essential in forwarding the enterprise. Included in them were 
fancy articles for presents to the native chiefs, with whom the agents were 
directed to treat for lauds to locate upon. The colonists, after encoun- 
tering much hardship, succeeded in making a settlement on the African 
coast. 

I may be pardoned here for remarking that this first expedition is par- 
ticularly and sadly impressed upon my memory. It was accompanied 
by my own brother. Dr. Samuel A. Crozer, in the twofold capacity of 
physician and first agent of the American Colonization Society, and as 
such he had the chief charge and direction of the colonists. But very 
early after their arrival on the coast he fell a victim to the climate, and 
a martyr to a cause in which he was so deeply engaged. 

A nucleus thus formed, it was strengthened from time to time by new 
emigration from the United States. Not by any spasmodic effort, but 
by the attractions of the settlement, sustained and fostered by the untir- 
ing labors of the Society in this country. 

I shall not detain your attention in tracing minutely the progress of 
the colony. For many years it encountered hardships and privations, 
such as are incident to new settlements so far removed from sources of 
succor and supply. Not, however, nearly so severe and crushing as those 
recorded by the early European emigrants to Virginia ; nor even those 
in New England in the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

But these trials and hardships decreased from year to year until now, 
aided as the emigrants are, on their arrival in Liberia by arrangements 
previously made for their reception, their trials are not greater than those 
of European emigrants to the United States. 

The colony increased slowly at first, but steadily — each succeeding 
year adding to their number, until in due time it seemed best that it 
should become an independent Government, enacting its own laws, and 
to be no longer under the control of the Society in America. And in 



23 

1847 they adopted a Constitution and form of government after the 
model of our own, which has since been acknowledged by nearly all 
the European Powers, and after much vexatious delay, by the Govern- 
ment of the United States also, and Liberia now takes rank amongst 
civilized nations. 

Liberia is an infant Republic, but its constitution and laws, and the 
wise administration of those laws — its location — its natural attractions 
as a home for the colored man, and above all the salutary and powerful 
influence it seems destined to exercise over the more savage tribes of that 
continent, encourages the belief that, at no very distant day, Liberia is to 
become a great and mighty nation. 

This Republic is the offspring of. the Colonization Society. It is the 
child of this organization, and owns no other parentage. It is now inde- 
pendent of us ; but the Society still renders efficient aid. It aims to 
foster and strengthen the rising State, and it is our desire to encourage 
respectable colored people to emigrate more largely from this country. 
We firmly believe that the Republic of Liberia is very far in advance of 
all other places as a home for the black man. The new Republic pos- 
sesses unmolested sway over more than five hundred miles of Atlantic 
coast, with a most fruitful and productive soil and territory, extending 
many miles into the interior parallel with the coast. Its seaboard was 
once a principal mart for traders in human beings ; but this hateful traffic 
is now expelled and driven away on all this line of coast. 

The Republic, by its proximity to and frequent intercourse with the 
interior will, under God, be a great instrument in introducing Christianity 
into these wide wastes of heathenism and habitations of cruelty. The 
Christian influence of the Colonization enterprise was not, perhaps, pro- 
minent in the minds of its founders, but now its friends look to this result 
as of primary consequence. 

The Society feels that it has a great work on hand. To send colored 
Christian men and women, not especially as missionaries, but as citizens 
who, in cultivating the soil, or in mechanical or mercantile pursuits, will 
in their frequent mingling with the natives infuse the principles of the 
Christian religion amongst them, working as leaven upon the African 
mind. 



24 

It is no Utopian idea for us, as a Society, to look along the vista of 
future years at the work which has been in progress for almost half a 
century, but is now extending with greatly accelerated force and power. 
Its infancy was tender, but not sickly. Its youth was not precocious, yet 
promising. It now stands before the world in comely proportions of 
vigor. It has reached the stature of early manhood. 

I believe this Society and the Republic of Liberia are smiled upon by 
Him, "who made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and 
the bounds of their habitation." 

I believe that the Almighty Sovereign of all, the Creator of all, inspired 
our forefathers to establish this Society to aid in elevating the colored 
race to a position of freedom and equality, and to plant the colony, now 
the Republic of Liberia, which in the fulness of time is to serve as a 
beacon to the tribes and nations of Africa, and to introduce the princi- 
ples of our holy religion amongst these savage people. 

This, brethren, is our work. This our hope — and to this end let us 
labor and pray. None now living may see the great results here fore- 
shadowed and in reserve for our reward. But when those now active in 
the work shall lay down their armor in death others will arise. A cause 
so noble — so philanthropic, may I add, so holy, cannot die until its mis- 
sion is accomplished. The Society must not tire or faint, or slacken its 
labors until the slave-trade and slavery shall no longer exist — when the 
accursed traffic in human sinews shall terminate forever — Africa be 
redeemed from ignorance, superstition and cruelty, and Ethiopia stretch 
forth her hands to God in gratitude for deliverance from the iron yoke of 
her oppressors, and for the light of the gospel of the Son of God. 



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PENNSYLVANIA COLONIZATION SOCIETY. 



The Thirty-seventh Anniversary of the Pennsylvania Colonization 
Society was celebrated on the evening of October 25th, 1863, at Trinity 
Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia. The religious exercises 
were conducted by the Rev. A. Longacre, pastor of the Church, and 
by the Rev. S. E. Appleton, rector of the Episcopal Church of the 
Mediator. 

The Addresses delivered on the occasion are herewith presented, in 
compliance with the request of the Board of Managers of the Society, 
unanimously adopted at a meeting held at its Rooms, No. 609 Walnut 
Street, on Tuesday, October 21th, viz : — 

" Besolved, That the Board return their grateful acknowledgments 
to William H. Allen, L. L. D., for his appropriate and excellent Dis- 
course delivered before the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, at its 
Anniversary on the 25th inst., and that a copy be requested for publi- 
cation." 

"Besolved, That the thanks of the Board be presented to John P. 
Crozer, Esq., President of the Society, for his aid and influence in 
promoting its objects, and that he be requested to furnish a copy of 
his interesting Address for publication." 



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